Martin O`Malley in CBS 2015 Democratic primary debate

On Budget & Economy: Our economy was wrecked by the big banks of Wall Street

CLINTON: For me, it is looking at what works and what we need to do to try to move past what happened in '08. And AIG was not a big bank. It had to be bailed out and it nearly destroyed us. Lehman Brothers was not a big bank. It was an investment bank. And its bankruptcy and its failure nearly destroyed us. So I've said, if the big banks don't play by the rules, I will break them up. And I will also go after executives who are responsible for the decisions that have such bad consequences for our country.

On Corporations: It's crony capitalism to bail out banks for bad bets

SANDERS: Wall Street play by the rules? Who are we kidding? The business model of Wall Street is fraud. That's what it is. Wall Street representatives will not be in my cabinet. Wall Street today has enormous economic and political power. Their business model is greed and fraud. And for the sake of our economy, the major banks must be broken up.

O'MALLEY: There is not a serious economist who would disagree that the six big banks of Wall Street have taken on so much power and that all of us are still on the hook to bail them out on their bad bets. That's not capitalism: that's crony capitalism. That's a wonderful business model. If you place bad bets, the taxpayers bail you out. But if you place good ones, you pocket it.

On Education: Goal of affordable & debt-free college, like in Maryland

O'MALLEY: I would agree with much of what Senator Sanders says. I believe that actually affordable college, debt-free college is the goal that we need to attain as a nation. And, unlike my two distinguished colleagues on this stage, I actually made college more affordable and was the only state that went four years in a row without a penny's increase to college tuition.

On Education: Dad went to college on GI bill; kids went on pile of bills

SANDERS: Yes.

O'MALLEY: I respectfully disagree with Senator Sander's approach. I believe that the goal should be debt-free college. I believe that our Federal Government needs to do more on Pell grants. States need to stop cutting higher education, and we should create a new block grant program that keeps the states' skin in the game, and we should lower these outrageous interest rates that parents and kids are being charged by their own government. 7% and 8% to go to college? I mean, my dad went to college on a G.I. Bill after coming home from Japan, flying 33 missions. My daughters went to college on a mountain of bills. We were proud of them on graduation day, but we're going to be proud every month for the rest of our natural lives. It doesn't need to be that way. We can have debt-free college in the United States.

On Foreign Policy: We should accept 65,000 Syrian refugees who are fleeing ISIL

SANDERS: I believe that the US has the moral responsibility with Europe, with Gulf countries like Saudi Arabia to make sure that when people leave countries like Afghanistan and Syria with nothing more than the clothing on their back that, of course, we reach out. Now, what the magic number is, I don't know, because we don't know the extent of the problem.

Q: Gov. O'Malley, you have a magic number. I think it's 65,000.

O'MALLEY: I was the first person on this stage to say that we should accept the 65,000 Syrian refugees that were fleeing the sort of murder of ISIL, and I believe that that needs to be done with proper screening.

Q: 65,000, the number stays?

O`MALLEY: That's what I understand is the international request.

Q: But what would you want?

O`MALLEY: I would want us to take our place among the nations of the world to alleviate this sort of death and the specter we saw of little kids' bodies washing up on a beach.

On Gun Control: Baltimore was safer with my comprehensive gun safety law

SANDERS: Let's do more than reverse the immunity. I have voted time and again for background checks. I don't know that there's any disagreement here.

O'MALLEY: Oh, yes there is. I think we do need to repeal that immunity that you granted to the gun industry. We have a lot of work to do and we're the only nation on the planet that buries as many of our people from gun violence as we do. SANDERS: I think it's fair to say that Baltimore is not now one of the safest cities in America

O'MALLEY: But it's a lot safer. It's saved a lot of lives along the way, Senator.

On Homeland Security: Nature of warfare has changed: focus on intel, not armies

Gov. O'MALLEY: The nature of warfare has changed. [The war on terror] is not a conflict where we send in the third divisions of Marines. This is a new era of conflict where traditional ways of huge standing armies do not serve our purposes as well as special ops, better intelligence and being more proactive.

Secretary CLINTON: We do have to take a hard look at the defense budget and we do have to figure out how we get ready to fight the adversaries of the future, not the past. But we have to also be very clear that we do have some continuing challenges.

On Immigration: Our symbol is the Statue of Liberty, not a barbed wire fence

O'MALLEY: We've actually been focusing on border security to the exclusion of talking about comprehensive immigration reform. In fact, if more border security--and more and more deportations-- were going to bring our Republican brothers and sisters to the table, it would have happened long ago. The truth of the matter is, net immigration from Mexico last year was zero. Fact check me. Go ahead. Check it out. But the truth of the matter is, if we want wages to go up, we've got to get 11 million of our neighbors out of off the book shadow economy, and into the full light of an American economy. That's what our parents and grandparents always did. That's what we need to do as a nation. Our symbol is the Statue of Liberty. It is not a barbed wire fence.

CLINTON: It is a fact that the net immigration from Mexico and South has basically zeroed out.

On Jobs: Maryland was first state to pass a living wage of $10.10

O'MALLEY: This was not merely theory in Maryland. We actually did it. Not only were we the first state in the nation to pass a living wage. We were the first to pass a minimum wage.

Q: You're calling for a $15 an hour wage now but why did you stop at $10.10 in your state?

O'MALLEY: $10.10 was all I could get the state to do by the time I left in my last year. But two of our counties actually went to $12.80 and their county executives would also tell you that it works. The more our people earn, the more money they spend, and the more our whole economy grows. That's American capitalism.

On Tax Reform: Wealthiest should pay more but not as much as under Reagan

SANDERS: We haven't come up with an exact number yet, but it will not be as high as the number under Dwight D. Eisenhower, which was 90%. I'm not that much of a socialist compared to Eisenhower. But we are going to end the absurdity, as Warren Buffet often reminds us, that billionaires pay an effective tax rate lower than nurses or truck drivers. That makes no sense at all. There has to be real tax reform, and the wealthiest and large corporations will pay when I'm president.

O'MALLEY: May I point out that under Ronald Reagan's first term, the highest marginal rate was 70%. And in talking to a lot of our neighbors who are in that super wealthy, millionaire and billionaire category, a great numbers of them love their country enough to do more again in order to create more opportunity for America's middle class.

On War & Peace: ISIS is an evil in this world; deal with them as evil

O'MALLEY: This actually is America's fight. It cannot solely be America's fight. America is best when we work in collaboration with our allies. America is best when we are actually standing up to evil in this world. And ISIS, make no mistake about it, is an evil in this world. And we do have a role in this. Not solely ours, but we must work collaboratively with other nations. The great failing of these last 10 or 15 years has been our failing of human intelligence on the ground. Our role in the world is not to roam the globe looking for new dictators to topple. Our role in the world is to make ourselves a beacon of hope, but also to confront evil when it rises. We took out the safe haven in Afghanistan, but now there is, undoubtedly, a larger safe haven and we must rise to this occasion in collaboration and with alliances to confront it, and invest in the future much better human intelligence so we know what the next steps are.